The Delta State Commissioner for Environment, Hon. Godspower Onafuvwe Asiuhwu, said residents are not actively encouraging the idea of environmental sanitation in the state.
He said a lot of the residents are ignorant of the environmental laws because they don’t know such a law exists and how it affects them, adding that the State Ministry of Justice is currently working on the environmental laws.
The Commissioner said this when Journalists paid him a courtesy visit at his office in Asaba on Monday.
According to him, the negligence from the residents is due to a lack of proper orientation and enlightenment that is supposed to come from the Local Government Areas.
He explained that the LGAs are not living up to their responsibilities of keeping their environment clean and evacuating dead bodies in the streets.
The Commissioner while explaining said “Most of the LGAs abandoned their environmental responsibilities to the state government. The Ministry is only there to supervise the activities of the LGAs and to come up with a policy that will help them operate effectively.”
“When I resumed office, I discovered that a lot of people are not taking sanitation so seriously. The residents normally locked up their shops and standby without engaging in the activity of sanitation.”
“At the initial stage, the Ministry has to come up with some form of sensitization and orientation program to educate the people about why they need to engage environmental sanitation.”
Asiuhwu said the Ministry was forced to map out a strategy for the 25 LGAs to overhaul their environment department since they discovered the challenges.
The commissioner who Is not happy with the way the Oshimili South Local Government Area residents are going about the Thursday sanitation exercise in the market said, the ministry has called on the council Chairman and the environmental department to sit up and take the issue of sanitation very seriously.”
He further said that his team at the Ministry of Environment will work until the last days of Governor Okowa’s administration.
